Search results matching tags 'Career' and 'Innovation'http://sqlblog.com/search/SearchResults.aspx?o=DateDescending&tag=Career,Innovation&orTags=0Search results matching tags 'Career' and 'Innovation'en-USCommunityServer 2.1 SP2 (Build: 61129.1)My Advice About Growing as an IT and Data Professionalhttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2013/07/15/my-advice-about-growing-as-an-it-and-data-professional.aspxMon, 15 Jul 2013 19:09:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:50119KKline<p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;"><a href="http://kevinekline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/IMG_6089.jpg"><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-5717" alt="IMG_6089" width="300" height="223" style="border:0px;cursor:default;float:right;" src="http://kevinekline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/IMG_6089-300x223.jpg"></a>First off, I should apologize for not blogging in quite a while. I've been traveling extensively and, because traveling can be so exhausting, I usually have to queue up blog posts to hit while I'm traveling in order to remain active while on the road. &nbsp;I didn't do that for these most recent trips. &nbsp;And, as you can see, there's quite a gap between this post and my last few posts.</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">On the other hand, I've experienced an unexpected surge in requests for mentoring and advice from friends and colleagues about career growth. &nbsp;I'm always happy to help out a friend and, in fact, there's little in my professional experience which I enjoy more than seeing friends grow and advance. &nbsp;Because I get a lot of questions about professional development, I try to distill these thoughts down into usable nuggets of wisdom.&nbsp;<span style="line-height:19px;">Since I've had quite a few interview requests in the vein of career and professional development in the last several weeks,&nbsp;I thought what better way to get back on track with blogging than to put them all together in one place!</span></p><h1 style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Infusive Solutions: Mindful Career Development</h1><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Ben Weiss, the digital marketing strategist at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.infusivesolutions.com/">Infusive Solutions</a>&nbsp;in NYC (<a href="http://facebook.com/InfusiveInc">facebook</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="http://www.infusivesolutions.com/resource-center/">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/InfusiveInc">twitter</a>), &nbsp;reached out to me a few weeks ago to discuss career development for his own team members around personal branding and career growth. &nbsp;This guy is really good at making hay while the sun is shining! &nbsp;We'd initially done just a simple phone discussion, but he has managed to expand these discussions in a variety of ways. &nbsp;Here are all the links, at present, to the content that Ben created from our discussions:</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">1. How to Become an IT Executive:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.infusivesolutions.com/blog/bid/99470/How-to-Become-an-IT-Executive-Especially-if-You-re-a-DBA">http://www.infusivesolutions.com/blog/bid/99470/How-to-Become-an-IT-Executive-Especially-if-You-re-a-DBA</a></p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">2. Landing page with the full interview:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.infusivesolutions.com/a-sql-server-mvp-with-knowledge-to-share">http://www.infusivesolutions.com/a-sql-server-mvp-with-knowledge-to-share</a></p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">3. The recent NYC SQL User Group meeting &nbsp;on personal branding:&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=170863">https://clicktoattend.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=170863</a></p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">One of the key points in the interviews is that the IT professionals who learn the most about what their business does, rather than just the IT that they work with, are frequently the most successful. &nbsp;It's a mindful process of understanding your strengths and weaknesses, improving those areas where you are genuinely weak, amplifying those areas where you excel, develop your communication skills, and then getting outside of your comfort zone to become a genuine business problem solver. &nbsp;I've said it 100 times -&nbsp;<strong>There are&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration:underline;"><em>NO</em></span>&nbsp;information technology problems. There are business problems which are&nbsp;<span style="text-decoration:underline;"><em>solved</em></span>&nbsp;with information technology. &nbsp;</strong>The IT pros who learn that lesson are mighty indeed. &nbsp;Grab the interviews for more insight.</p><h1 style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Louis Davidson: Why We Write</h1><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Louis "DrSQL" Davidson (<a href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a href="http://twitter.com/drsql">twitter</a>) is a long-time good friend. We live in the same fantastic town of Nashville, TN and both are active supporting the local SQL Server user group. &nbsp;In one of those ironic twists of 21st-century life, we might see each other more in a given year in&nbsp;<em>other&nbsp;</em>cities than in our own home town, simply because we both speak and travel a lot. &nbsp;If you're considering growing your professional credentials by writing, and it certainly is one of the best ways to grow your personal brand, then I recommend you read all of the "Why We Write" posts in Louis' blog series. &nbsp;In my interview, I tried to give Louis really thoughtful and insightful answers. &nbsp;The core of my advice to potential writers in the answer to question number 5. &nbsp;Please read it and tell me what you think. &nbsp;The full blog post and interview:</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Why We Write, #6 by Louis Davidson with Kevin Kline:&nbsp;<a href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2013/06/05/why-we-write-6-an-interview-with-kevin-kline.aspx">http://sqlblog.com/blogs/louis_davidson/archive/2013/06/05/why-we-write-6-an-interview-with-kevin-kline.aspx</a></p><h1 style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Richard Douglas: Speaking and Presentation Skills</h1><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">My friend and former coworker at Quest Software, Richard Douglas, has also put together a very nice interview series which is predominantly IT experts from the UK. &nbsp;Richard has some very insightful questions and a rather different strategy. &nbsp;His questions are much more focused on developing skills as a good speaker. &nbsp;It's been very gratifying to see Richard grow in stature as a database expert over in the UK and I'm looking forward to even more great community work from him. &nbsp;An example of the interesting sort of questions he came up with for the interview include how to make a presentation not only useful, but how can the speaker project it with authority and charisma? &nbsp;That's not the sort of question I get every day.</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Read my answer to this question and many more here:&nbsp;<a href="http://sql.richarddouglas.co.uk/archive/2013/01/new-years-aspirations-kevin-kline-presenting.html#ixzz2MtjkVRb6">http://sql.richarddouglas.co.uk/archive/2013/01/new-years-aspirations-kevin-kline-presenting.html#ixzz2MtjkVRb6</a>.</p><h1 style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Tim Ford: Interpersonal and Communication Skills</h1><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Tim Ford (<a href="http://www.ford-it.com/sqlagentman">blog</a>&nbsp;|<a href="http://twitter.com/sqlagentman">twitter</a>) is a long-time SQL Server pro, who's also a very energetic volunteer and user group leader. &nbsp;One of his very cool side projects is the&nbsp;<a href="http://sqlcruise.com/2014-sql-cruises/">SQL Cruise</a>. &nbsp;Tim has been running the SQL Cruise for many years now and it's one of my favorite ways to conduct training. &nbsp;We have a full day of training every day that we're at sea. &nbsp;We do excursions together. &nbsp;We do "office hours" every evening with lots of time to discuss individual problems, career development, and focus on individual mentoring. &nbsp;A while back, Tim conducted an audio interview and, for some reason, I'm only now getting around to post it.</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Please give it a listen and let me know what you think:&nbsp;<a href="http://db.tt/UHJK5ojc">http://db.tt/UHJK5ojc</a>. (This is a Dropbox file. I'm not really sure how it'll behave if you do not have Dropbox installed. Let me know if it doesn't work as expected).</p><h1 style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Rodney Landrum and SQLBeats: Looking Over the Horizon</h1><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Rodney Landrum (<a href="https://twitter.com/SQLBeat">Twitter</a>&nbsp;|<a href="http://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/author/2133-rodney-landrum/">Blog</a>)&nbsp;has been putting out great content for Simple-Talk for quite a long time now. &nbsp;In fall of 2012, we got together and recorded a podcast which was really fun and, at times, funny.&nbsp;Here is the full podcast. Rodney told me that he laughed at several points while editing. &nbsp;That makes me happy!</p><div id="yui_3_7_2_1_1372259898115_59292" style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;"><a id="yui_3_7_2_1_1372259898115_59291" title="http://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2012/10/02/sqlbeat-podcast-episode-5-kevin-kline-talks-with-me-about-sql-professional-development-and-book-writin/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2012/10/02/sqlbeat-podcast-episode-5-kevin-kline-talks-with-me-about-sql-professional-development-and-book-writin/">http://www.simple-talk.com/blogs/2012/10/02/sqlbeat-podcast-episode-5-kevin-kline-talks-with-me-about-sql-professional-development-and-book-writin/</a></div><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">&nbsp;</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">Most of all, I'd like to hear your feedback. &nbsp;Let me know what you think by posting a comment here, mentioning this on Twitter, or social media like Facebook or LinkedIn. &nbsp;Many thanks,</p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;"><span style="line-height:19px;">-Kevin</span></p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;"><a href="http://twitter.com/kekline">-Follow me on Twitter!</a><br><a href="https://plus.google.com/u/1/113032055249023350257?rel=author">-Google Author</a></p><p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;font-size:13.333333969116211px;line-height:18.99305534362793px;">&nbsp;</p>A Fond Farewell to Quest Softwarehttp://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2012/07/11/a-fond-farewell-to-quest-software.aspxWed, 11 Jul 2012 23:01:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:44267KKline<p style="font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;line-height:19px;"></p><p></p><p>The week of the 4<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;of July is a happy week for Americans.&nbsp; Most families get out for a parade, a fireworks display, a picnic in the park, a movie where Will Smith puts the beat down on a bunch of aliens, or an afternoon at the pool or lake.&nbsp; We celebrate the contributions of our service men and women. We honor veterans. We drink a lot of beer.&nbsp; We reflect on the founding of our nation and the meaning of “Independence Day”.</p><p>My own reflections over the Independence Day holiday took me in a new and rather unexpected direction.&nbsp; After ten-and-a-half immensely rewarding years at&nbsp;<a title="Database Management Tools of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/database-management/">Quest Software</a>, I have decided to seek new opportunities.&nbsp;</p><p>Today, I wanted to publicly reflect on my time at Quest Software, saving my next blog post for some thoughts about my new endeavors. &nbsp;I could probably write a short novel about all of the great experiences and learning opportunities I had over the last ten years. &nbsp;Part of the reason it might make a good novel is because my memory is notoriously weak and my creativity is equally strong. &nbsp;I might just make up details to fill in the fuzzy recollections. &nbsp;Just sayin'... &nbsp;But just to give you a taste, here’s a brief timeline of my ten years at Quest, highlighting some of my favorite experiences:</p><ul><li>I joined Quest on January 2<sup>nd</sup>&nbsp;of 2002 as Senior Product Architect to design the tools that would become Quest’s first foray into the SQL Server database market. &nbsp;Quest dominated the Oracle tools market but was at square one for tools in the SQL Server space.&nbsp; I’m grateful to Eyal Aronoff, CTO in those days, and Guy Harrison (<a title="Guy Harrison's Blog" href="http://guyharrison.squarespace.com/">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a title="Guy Harrison's Twitter Feed" href="https://twitter.com/guyharrison">twitter</a>), current leader of the Melbourne office, for mentoring me through the near-comically hard process of designing and building software products&nbsp;<em>that can sell</em>. Dax French, then product manager, taught me about the concept of salability.&nbsp; Oh, it’s easy to put requirements down on paper.&nbsp; But that’s about as close to a finished and sellable product as a laptop is to an abacus.&nbsp; I also learned a whole heck of a lot about software development from&nbsp;<a title="Patrick O'Keeffe of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/newsroom/patrick-okeeffe.aspx">Patrick O'Keeffe</a>, and about corporate politics in a worldwide development organization, especially from Julie Ackerman, then VP of Operations.&nbsp;</li><li>In late 2003, I became the Director of Technology for the SQL Server Solutions Group. (Yeah! We had a team name and a few products!)&nbsp; Hiring your own team is a dream for many leaders in IT.&nbsp; And I have to say with more than a little pride that the organization we built included the most intelligent, energized, and fun people I’ve ever known.&nbsp; Being empowered to hire a team, set goals, and deliver on them was a fantastic, though demanding experience.&nbsp; .&nbsp; I’m thankful to the team for their incredibly hard work and unsinkable ethics: John Theron, Johnny Ortez, Lee Grisson, Joe Motley, Hassan Fahimi, Israel Kalush, and so many others.&nbsp; I’m grateful that my more experienced peers on the other major dev teams, Rony Lerner and Steve Rosenberg, enthusiastically taught me how to answer the needs of both a sales-driven corporation and a deadline-driven engineering process.</li><li>Throughout this time, I experienced the full support of&nbsp;<a title="The Executive Leadership of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/company/management-team.aspx">Quest’s executive leadership</a>&nbsp;as a Microsoft MVP and, even more so, as a founder and eventual president of&nbsp;<a title="The Professional Association for SQL Server" href="http://www.sqlpass.org/">PASS</a>.&nbsp; I can’t emphasize enough what a big deal this was.&nbsp; The leadership of PASS was an incredibly difficult workload to support, basically equivalent to a second full-time job, and also a difficult period in my life personally.&nbsp; I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully thank the top leadership of Quest for allowing me, around 2006, to move some of those PASS hours into my day job at Quest.&nbsp; I literally could NOT have served two terms as president of PASS without this level of support.&nbsp; Yeah! Now I was back down to an acceptable number of hours per week, including the time spent on PASS, blogging, etc with my day job.</li><li>In 2005, I again ventured into new territory and new experiences. &nbsp;I never in my wildest dreams anticipated that I’d someday learn about and actually work on M&amp;A deals.&nbsp; I knew Quest did some M&amp;A from our acquisition of Leccotech, bringing in the outstandingly talented&nbsp;<a title="Claudia Fernandez of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/newsroom/claudia-fernandez.aspx">Claudia Fernandez</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a title="Darren Mallette of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/newsroom/darren-mallette.aspx">Darren Mallette</a>, among many others, and FastLane, where I learned a lot from David Waugh.&nbsp; But that’s exactly what happened when&nbsp;<a title="Qsft - Imceda Acquisition Press Release" href="http://www.quest.com/news-release/quest-software-to-acquire-imceda-software-inc-042005-81496.aspx">Quest finally acted on my advice to acquired Imceda</a>, where I got to meet and work with the likes of Douglas Chrystall (<a title="Douglas Chrystall's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/dchrystall">twitter</a>), Jason Hall (<a title="Jason Hall's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/jasonfhall">twitter</a>), and&nbsp;<a title="David Gugick of Quest Software" href="http://www.quest.com/newsroom/david-gugick.aspx">David Gugick</a>&nbsp;(<a title="David Gugick's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/davidgugick">twitter</a>). During this time, I learned an amazing amount about executive leadership from some of the very best in the IT industry – Vinny Smith, Doug Garn, Charles Ramsey, Steve Dickson and John Newsome.&nbsp; I think they’d probably laugh to hear me say this, but I have confess that I was at the level of “barely able to hold my fudge” intimidation whenever I breathed the same air as these guys. &nbsp;But I also watched them closely, tried to absorb their wisdom, and emulate their behaviors that engendered the success of the company.</li><li>2006 marked another new adventure for me at Quest because, for the first time, I began to work more heavily on technology evangelism than on product development.&nbsp; We now had several products which needed more attention and focus on campaign-driven marketing efforts.&nbsp;&nbsp;<a title="Billy Bosworth, CEO of Datastax" href="http://www.datastax.com/about-us/management">Billy Bosworth</a>&nbsp;joined as our new VP and General Manager.&nbsp; Christian Hasker (<a title="Christian Hasker's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/chasker">twitter</a>) joined as our new Director for Product Marketing, while Heather Eichmann and Andy Grant joined the effort. &nbsp;This team rocked! &nbsp;We became a team of thought leaders that influenced the way the rest of the company did business. &nbsp;I learned an enormous amount from these folks about advertising, marketing, technology evangelism, and community building.&nbsp; I could easily write a book with anecdotes and lessons on how to be an effective technology evangelist.&nbsp; Charles Ramsey, president of Quest during those days, bestowed the title of “Technical Strategy Manager” upon me due to all of the time I was spending on a wide cross-section of activities for sales, marketing, R&amp;D, as well as interfacing with Microsoft’s SQL Server team, to name a few, Paul Randal (<a title="Paul Randal's Blog" href="http://sqlskills.com/blogs/paul/">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a title="Paul Randal's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/PaulRandal/">twitter</a>), Kevin Farlee, Gert Drapers (<a title="Gert Draper's Blog" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/gertd/">blog</a>), Joe Yong, Bob Ward (<a title="Bob Ward's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/bobwardms">twitter</a>), the late Ken Henderson, Jimmy May (<a title="Jimmy May's Blog" href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jimmymay/">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a title="Jimmy May's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/aspiringgeek">twitter</a>), Mark Souza (<a title="Mark Souza's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/mark_sqlcat">twitter</a>) and the Jedi of&nbsp;<a title="Microsoft's SQL Server Customer Advisory Team" href="http://www.sqlcat.com/">SQLCAT</a>, and many others.</li><li>I still remember fondly how a friend had forwarded a “tweet” from a certain Brent Ozar (<a title="Brent Ozar's Blog" href="http://brentozar.com/">blog</a>&nbsp;|&nbsp;<a title="Brent Ozar's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/brento">twitter</a>) about him being excited to sit in my session at the PASS Summit in late 2007.&nbsp; My first thought was “What the heck is a tweet?!?” &nbsp;My second thought was "I should meet this guy!" &nbsp;Before long, though, I was working with Brent in his new role as our full-time technology evangelist whence I moved to Pre-Sales to work more directly with large customers and key accounts - and where I have been ever since (until now).&nbsp; During that time I learned how to give a really good product demo from Jason Hall, David Swanson, and Ari Weil&nbsp; (If you don’t already know how to give a good product demo, check out&nbsp;<a href="http://www.secondderivative.com/">http://www.secondderivative.com/</a>&nbsp;and buy their book post-haste).&nbsp; It was also very education to learn from great Pre-Sales leaders like John Milburn and Robb Dunewood.&nbsp; I also learned a whole lot about the awesomeness of&nbsp;<a title="Camtasia, the BEST Video Editing and Webcasting Software for PCs" href="http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html">Camtasia</a>&nbsp;– which you should buy&nbsp;<em>right now</em>&nbsp;if you ever do recorded presentations. Brent stayed with us for a couple years, teaching me an enormous amount about social media and, although I’d been blogging since 2004, a whole lot about how to be a better blogger.&nbsp; Someday, I hope to actually&nbsp;<em>apply&nbsp;</em>what I learned from Brent.</li></ul><p>From that early team, we built a culture of trust with our customers, attempting at every turn to add value to what we built.&nbsp; And it shows.&nbsp; Our products have won a multitude of awards and plaudits.&nbsp; I’ve seen a host of product launches and major new releases. I cannot take nor deserve the credit for these great tools. I was merely a very small part of the team that brought them to life.</p><p>I’m so very proud of the full-stack monitoring and alerting in Spotlight, of the unmatched analytics in Foglight Performance Analysis, of the raw value of LiteSpeed.&nbsp; I’m also very proud of the evolution of Toad, from a small and practical aggregation of utilities, into a full suite for developers, data modelers, and data analysts.&nbsp; Add in the unique scalability testing features of Benchmark Factory and I can say without any apology that we built the definitive and comprehensive platform of tools for the database professional.</p><p>Working deep in technology has always been interesting and exciting. But my favorite part of the job has always been interacting with customers and partners.&nbsp; It’s an uplifting experience to share the ways in which the Quest tools empower customers to do things they’ve never been able to do before and to make their jobs and their lives better.&nbsp; Meeting our clients on four continents over the course of thousands of presentations and meetings has been a top highlight of my career.&nbsp; Whenever I interact with customers, I want the focus to be on mutual learning.&nbsp; Customers teach me as much as I’ve ever taught them.&nbsp;</p><p>As time advanced, though, I gained insight into why some periods at Quest were more enjoyable than others.&nbsp; The laser-sighted focus of our early, smaller organization was a definitely highlight.&nbsp; The rhythm of business travel also picked up dramatically in recent years, with a commensurate decline in my overall health and wellbeing. &nbsp;Clearly, I needed a change.&nbsp;</p><p>You might be asking “If it was so good, why are you changing things?”&nbsp; Well, I’m not leaving because of a negative of some kind.&nbsp; I can assure you that it is not because I’ve had some kind of personality conflict, disagreement over strategy, or that I’m otherwise unhappy with Quest.&nbsp; Quite the opposite, I’m leaving because I’ve been offered an new opportunity that is both very exciting and enormously reinvigorating.&nbsp;</p><p>To all of you that I’ve already mentioned mentioned by name, and to the multitude more whose name I wasn't able to record above, I owe a debt of gratitude. &nbsp;I wish you not goodbye, but the fondest of farewell.&nbsp;</p><p>Farewell is also in order because to you, my readers because, well, you’ll still be seeing me in all the old familiar places. So where am I off to? Tune in next Monday for that bit of news.</p><p>Until then. &nbsp;Enjoy!</p><p>-Kev&nbsp;</p><p>-<a title="Kevin Kline's Twitter Feed" href="http://twitter.com/kekline">Follow me on Twitter</a></p><p></p><p></p>New on &quot;Database Trends &amp; Applications&quot;http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2011/08/16/new-on-database-trends-applications.aspxTue, 16 Aug 2011 19:37:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:37854KKline<p>In last month's column, "2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as
We Know It," I described a number of major developments in the IT
industry that are likely to disrupt the life of database professionals
everywhere.&nbsp; I categorize those four disruptors - virtualization, cloud
computing, solid state drives (SSD), and advanced multi-core CPUs - into
two broad groups.&nbsp; I'm going to continue an analysis of these
disruptive technologies in inverse order.&nbsp; Today, let's discuss SSDs. </p>[READ MORE ON <em><a href="http://www.dbta.com/Articles/Columns/SQL-Server-Drill-Down/The-Changing-State-of-Hardware-77029.aspx" target="_blank" title="Kevin Kline's Database Trends and Applications Magazine Column">DATABASE TRENDS &amp; APPLICATIONS</a> </em>]Innovation and Invention: Whose Method is Best?http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2011/03/22/innovation-and-invention-whose-method-is-best.aspxTue, 22 Mar 2011 14:27:00 GMT21093a07-8b3d-42db-8cbf-3350fcbf5496:34313KKline<p>My Favorite Magazine </p><p><a href="http://www.economist.com"><img src="http://media.economist.com/sites/all/themes/econfinal/images/the-economist-logo.gif" alt="" height="89" width="183"></a></p><p>
There are a lot of reasons why I love <a href="http://www.economist.com" title="It's For More People than Just Economists" target="_blank"><em>The Economist</em></a> magazine and pay over $100 per year for a subscription. First of all, it summarizes all of its news articles, big and small, in the first 4-5 pages of the magazine. Don't have time to read the entire issue? No problem, how does 20 minutes work for you? Second, it reports news from around the world as if the rest of the world <em>actually matters</em>, whereas every American news magazine I read looks at the rest of the world as an afterthought. You probably know me well enough to know that I travel internationally at least a couple times each year (not <a href="http://sqlblog.com/blogs/greg_low/" title="An MCM before there were MCMs" target="_self">Greg Low</a> levels of international travel, but still) and it always surprises my friends abroad that I know whose in leadership in their home country, what their biggest internal issues are, and so forth. Thank you <em>Economist.</em> Third, I like the external viewpoint the <em>Economist</em> brings to American politics. Although it's has a moderately conservative political leaning, it doesn't mind poking a finger into the eye of stupid ideas and positions held by any party or politician. Simply put, the Brits behind the <em>Economist</em> don't have a dog in our fight and so are free to speak their own very well informed mind.
I count the subscription expense towards my professional development because I've had no other input that was quite as effective at broadening my horizons, so to speak.
Gosh - I did NOT mean to make this blog post sound like a commercial! My apologies!
What I was getting at in the heading points to another thing I really like about the <em>Economist</em> - very intelligent and well structured debates which the hold on-line every week or two. These debates follow the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Squared#Debate_Format" title="This is a great format for debate. I wish we used it more often and on more topics here in the USA." target="_blank">Oxford style of debate</a> (I didn't even know there <em>was</em> an Oxford style of debate) with open commentary from us, the public. In their words, "The format was made famous by the 186-year-old Oxford Union and has been practised by heads of state, prominent intellectuals and galvanising figures from across the cultural spectrum. It revolves around an assertion that is defended on one side (the "proposer") and assailed on another (the "opposition") in a contest hosted and overseen by a moderator. Each side has three chances to persuade readers: opening, rebuttal and closing."
</p><p>An Excellent Book for New DBAs and Those Who Want to Become Better<br></p><p><a href="http://dbasurvivor.com/"><img src="http://thomaslarock.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/new_cover_lg.jpg" alt="" height="239" width="181"></a>[/caption]
One recent debate caught my eye as particularly significant for the IT industry (the heading is a hyperlink):
</p><h2 style="padding-left:30px;"><a href="http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/199" title="Join the Debate!" target="_blank"><em>Innovation Models</em></a></h2>
<h2 style="padding-left:30px;"><em>This house believes Japanese "incremental innovation" is superior to the West's "disruptive innovation".</em></h2><p>
Wow! That's a broadside if ever I saw one. But a very worthy discussion, especially for me since innovation and creativity in the development process are some of my favorite pet topics. I've long believed that DBAs and Developers are much more akin to artists and "makers" than to engineers, so the innovation process is a big deal to me. I wrote about this at length when I was given the opportunity to write a forward to Tom Larock's (<a href="http://thomaslarock.com/" title="It's March Madness!" target="_blank">blog</a> | <a href="http://twitter.com/sqlrockstar" title="Tom's kryptonite is Jagger" target="_blank">twitter</a>) book, <a href="http://apress.com/book/view/9781430227878" title="It's Good!" target="_blank">DBA Survivor</a>.
I encourage you to push your intellect a little further and harder. Take a look at this debate and, since their free to the public, subscribe to the RSS feed and see what else comes down the pipeline. There's a new one just around the corner.
</p><p>&nbsp;</p><div><span style="font-family:'Times New Roman';">~~~</span></div>
<div>
Enjoy!
</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>-Kev
</div><div><div>&nbsp;</div><div><a href="http://twitter.com/kekline" title="C'mon. You know you want to!" target="_blank">Twitter at kekline</a></div><div>More content at http://KevinEKline.com <br></div>
</div>